Anatomic and Non-Anatomic Shoulder Replacement
In the field of shoulder arthroplasty, there are two general and somewhat competing points of view regarding the state of the patient's anatomy. From the point of view of some clinicians, it is desirable to aim for restoration of the native anatomy through use of prosthetic shoulder components that are shaped in a manner that is anatomically correct, particularly with regards to the shape of the prosthetic humeral head. For others, the higher objective is to aim for adapting and balancing the existing soft tissues, particularly the rotator cuff and musculature, with the shape and orientation of the replacement humeral head, even if the shape of the prosthetic head is not anatomically correct.
The anatomic approach involves restoration of the humeral head to its pre-diseased state, with utilization of spherical humeral head components with proportional diameter and thickness. In contrast, the non-anatomic approach involves humeral head replacement with soft-tissue balancing of the rotator cuff utilizing spherical humeral head components of varying thicknesses. Generally, within the art, reverse shoulder arthroplasty is considered non-anatomic shoulder replacement because the native glenoid side of the shoulder is converted to a sphere to mimic the humerus (glenosphere), while the humeral side is converted to mimic a glenoid (typically through replacement of the humeral head with a cup shaped implant).
Desired features of anatomic implants include replication of humeral neck angle, version, and posterior and medial offset. In the current art, stemmed arthroplasty systems are the most prevalent, and essentially all stemmed arthroplasty systems use spherical humeral heads. The conventional belief is that roughly one-third of a sphere is considered to be the most anatomically correct shape of the current offerings. Regardless of head size, the ratio of the head height to the radius of curvature is about 3:4. Clinical outcomes in patients who have received anatomically correct prostheses are generally regarded as superior when compared to soft-tissue balancing techniques using non-anatomically shaped (i.e., anatomically incorrect) prostheses.
A challenge in the art is the absence of anatomically correct head articulation surfaces. It is known that the native anatomical shape of the humeral head is not spherical, but elliptical (i.e., where the cross section of the humeral head has a radius of curvature in the superior to inferior dimension that is greater than the radius of curvature of the cross section in the anterior to posterior dimension). Recent research has shown that a prosthetic humeral head having a cross sectional shape adjacent to the bone cut that is elliptically-shaped and a generally spherical center point would theoretically allow a patient to have improved shoulder range of motion and function postoperatively. However, because the center of rotation of the humeral head is offset from the long axis of the humeral bone, it has been impractical for any shoulder implant company to create a prosthesis with an elliptically-shaped prosthetic humeral head. Merely coupling an elliptically-shaped head with a traditional stemmed prosthesis design would present difficulties accounting for the surgeon's need to simultaneously achieve the proper head size, correct rotational orientation of the elliptical head, and the proper amount of superior to inferior and anterior to posterior offset relative to the stem. Moreover, in many shoulder surgeries, only the humeral portion of the joint is replaced while the native glenoid is left intact, presenting a challenge of matching the articulating surface of the head prosthetic with the native articulating surface of the glenoid. This challenge is not present in total arthroplasty, where both the humeral and the glenoid portions are replaced with prosthetics.
Ideally, a shoulder arthroplasty system would provide a wide range of head choices and offsets to most precisely match the patient's native anatomy. With such a system, a near perfect match could be achieved in a hemi-arthroplasty, and if the system were modular, could be adapted in a revision to provide an ideal match if the shoulder is converted to either a total arthroplasty or to a reverse shoulder arthroplasty. The current art does not provide such modular systems, thus, to accomplish the desirable offsets with traditional stem designs, whether using spherical or elliptical heads, it would be necessary to stock an essentially infinite inventory of prosthetic heads and/or stems with variable offsets for achieving the desired shape, size and positioning, which is, of course, economically impractical.